Stop Talking About Relevance in the Curriculum

Reducing diversification and decolonisation to "relevance" is a gross misunderstanding of curriculum development.

Let’s talk about a common mistake — a well-meaning one, but a mistake nonetheless. When critics of diversification and decolonisation talk about curriculum, the phrase “making it more relevant to our students” gets thrown around like confetti at a school assembly with scorn. Inclusive. Responsive. Student-centred. They are all criticised because if we make the curriculum “relevant”, we might somehow be dumbing it down.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: making the curriculum more “relevant” isn’t the point. And if that’s where our understanding begins and ends, we’re missing the bigger picture. Worse still, we’re reducing complex, often painful work to a marketing tagline.

Let’s Get One Thing Straight: This Isn’t About Decorating the Curriculum

Adding a few books by authors of colour or referencing Diwali in a lesson on festivals, whilst a good first move, doesn’t mean you’ve truly thought about diversifying anything. That’s not change — that’s decoration. It’s the educational equivalent of putting a flag in your Twitter bio and calling yourself an ally.

Diversifying the curriculum isn’t about relevance. It means asking uncomfortable questions about whose voices have always dominated and why. It’s about digging into the assumptions we’ve made about what counts as knowledge and who gets to decide that. It’s about seeing that the curriculum we inherited — many of us without question — was built on a foundation that often excluded, marginalised, and silenced.

So, no. Diversifying isn’t about swapping out Shakespeare for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie because it might make your Year 9s sit up straighter. It’s about showing students that knowledge doesn’t begin and end in Europe. That there are rich, complex, valuable bodies of thought in every corner of the world — and those deserve more than just a passing mention in Black History Month.

Decolonising Is Not About Feeling Good

And don’t even get me started on the word “decolonising.” It’s been stretched and squeezed and twisted into something so soft it barely means anything anymore in some circles. True decolonisation is a process of challenging power. It forces us to confront how colonial systems continue to shape the way we teach, assess, and value knowledge.

Decolonising isn’t a checklist. It’s not, “Tick, I’ve included a lesson on the British Empire.” It’s about interrogating why that empire is still so often presented as a noble adventure rather than a system of violent domination. It’s asking why we’re still prioritising French philosophers and English poets while side-lining the thinkers who resisted.

It’s uncomfortable. It’s supposed to be.

“Relevant” Is Too Small a Word

When we reduce all this to “making it relevant,” we do something dangerous: we centre student enjoyment instead of student empowerment. Don’t get me wrong — relevance matters. But if that’s all we’re chasing, we’re playing the same game with slightly different rules. We’re still delivering a version of education where the teacher controls the knowledge, and the student’s job is to consume it — maybe just with more relatable packaging.

Decolonising and diversifying, when done properly, give students agency. They disrupt the idea that knowledge is static. They show students, especially those from marginalised backgrounds, that they don’t have to fit into a curriculum that was never written with them in mind. They

can shape it. Question it. Push back against it.

So, What Should We Be Saying?

Let’s stop talking about relevance and start talking about rigour. Not the old-school “chalk and talk” kind, but the rigour that comes from engaging with complexity, nuance, and multiple perspectives. Let’s talk about the emotional labour this work involves, for both staff and students. Let’s talk about curriculum as an act of justice.

Because if all we’re doing is trying to get a few more kids to see themselves in the books we teach, we’re aiming too low. Our goal should be bolder: to build a curriculum that no longer demands assimilation or silence. One that honours multiple truths. One that doesn’t just reflect the world, but reshapes it.